Albin Erlanson
aerlanso(at)uni-bonn.de
C´edric Wasser cedric.wasser(at)uni-bonn.de
Mechanism Design and Social Choice - Winter Term 2015 Preliminary Syllabus
This course introduces students to the ideas and concepts of social choice and mechanism design theory.
Prerequisites:Knowledge of topics covered in the basic master module Microeconomics will be assumed.
Lectures: Tuesday and Thursday 12-14 in H¨orsaal F
Grading:Grades will be based solely on performance in one final exam (closed book).
Course outline: We plan to cover the following topics.
Part I: Social Choice Theory (Albin) – 7 lectures
• Social welfare functions
– Arrow’s impossibility theorem
– Restricted environments (May’s Theorem, Median Voter Theorem)
• Social Choice functions
– The Gibbard-Satterthwaite Theorem – Connection to Arrow’s Theorem
– Restricted environments, e.g., single-peaked preferences Part II: Mechanism Design Theory (C´edric) – 14 lectures
• Implementation in dominant strategies / in Bayesian Nash equilibrium
• The Revelation Principle
• Quasi-linear environments
– Efficiency: Vickrey-Clarke-Groves mechanisms
– Efficiency and Budget Balance: Expected externality mechanism – Characterization of Bayesian incentive compatibility
– Participation constraints
• Optimal auctions
• Bilateral trade and the Myerson-Satterthwaite Theorem Part III: Matching and multi-object auctions (Albin) – 7 lectures
• Matching (without money), e.g., school choice and house allocation
• Matching with money and multi-object auctions
